


Ironeyes

by puddlejumper38



Category: Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Canon Compliant, Epilogue, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 11:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puddlejumper38/pseuds/puddlejumper38
Summary: A Marsh epilogue to Hero of Ages.(spoilers for Era 1 Mistborn)





	Ironeyes

He would destroy them all. Their emperor was dead and now he would rip apart the rest of them, watching their blood splatter on the floor and pool at his feet. The heat outside was becoming intense, his spikes heating up and blistering his skin. That didn’t matter. The world was _meant_ to burn. An exquisite conclusion to a world buried in ash. Marsh grinned.

And something tore through his mind.

Marsh screamed and the world tilted. He remembered dropping to his knees. He did not remember falling the rest of the way to the ground, but he must have because he was lying down and it felt like his brain was trying to turn itself inside out.

It was gone as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Marsh curled up on the floor clutching his head. Blood ran out of his empty eye socket.

Marsh groaned softly.

He lay just inside the cave entrance, burning from the intense heat outside. So many more would die. As if the increasing ash hadn’t been enough; as if his _own_ atrocities hadn’t been enough. Those who had, by some miracle, survived this long were out there _burning_ on a catastrophic level that Marsh could never had fathomed, not even in his worst nightmares –

_Ah. Ruin’s attention is elsewhere._

Since Luthadel, Ruin had not been allowing him even the dubious luxury of his own thoughts. He had that now, certainly, and a great deal of pain. Enough independent thought to witness the end of the world.

Whatever Vin had done once she’d been free of Ruin’s influence, it clearly hadn’t been enough. Marsh remembered the feel of her bones breaking under his hand and nausea rose. Why had she spared him? He’d only gone on to kill more people. And Elend Venture. He had killed Elend Venture.

The emperor hadn’t deserved that. For all that his rule had seemed shaky when Marsh had first met him, he’d done well. And he’d fought bravely.

Yet another casualty of Marsh’s cursed existence.

The world started to cool and his spikes with it. Marsh gasped softly, automatically burning what was left of his gold metalmind to heal the wounds. It ran out before he was done, but it did a passable job.

His head still hurt badly. Part of that was the missing eye spike.

Marsh raised a hand to his head. And froze.

His hand went still in front of his face; he could see it clearly in his Inquisitor vision. Marsh watched the blue lines move as he clenched it slowly into a fist.

Since that could not possibly have happened, Marsh flexed his fingers and clenched his hand again.

He sat up abruptly, his hand flying behind his back. The tunnels spun around him, his missing eye spike disorientating him. Ruin had been forcing him to ignore that but now… Marsh fumbled, his hand glancing off the linchpin spike instead of getting a solid grip on it.

Marsh ground his teeth in frustration. Ruin had taken it’s attention from Marsh enough that he could _move_ and now he’d blown his chance because of a little disorientation.

Braced for the onslaught of Ruin’s immediate attention, Marsh prepared to try again anyway. He lifted his hand to the spike… and nothing stopped him. Nothing at all.

There was no influence to push through, nothing that made moving even remotely difficult.

He, with Allomancer and Feruchemist powers, could move without Ruin’s consent. Forget taking his own life from Ruin, Marsh might be able to stop the vast army of Koloss from killing more people.

He lurched to his feet, swayed badly and stumbled out of the caves, his axe gripped tightly in one hand. And stopped.

There were no Koloss outside. There were no people outside either. In fact, ‘outside’ looked so radically different from barely a few minutes before that, for the first time in a long time, Marsh tried to blink. The muscles around his eye-sockets spasmed. Perhaps he’d finally gone mad. That certainly seemed more likely than the rolling hills Marsh was currently looking at.

Marsh wasn’t proud of that. He’d fought so hard to stay sane under the pressure of Ruin’s influence; to do _anything_ to stop the constant destruction. Perhaps there had been times he’d wished for madness, but only because he couldn’t fight. Only when he’d been giving up again.

He took a few steps forward and the ground was slightly springy under his feet.

That was… odd.

None of this was right. The world had been burning. _Dying_. Marsh had helped cause that and he’d known there’d been no real way to defeat Ruin. This… It was not Ruin’s vision for the world. Whatever it was.

Blue lined shapes on the ground caught his eye and Marsh knelt in the soft ground, reaching out with a trembling hand to brush his fingertips across a familiar shape. Mare’s drawing. This looked exactly like Mare’s drawing. And it wasn’t the only one. There were whole fields of them; of Mare’s flowers. Were these… were the plants green? Marsh tilted his head, trying to concentrate through the pain and the one-eyed vision. It took effort to tell colours apart. He could not _see_ them as such, but telling them apart was not impossible. And that effort was telling him the plants were green.

No, this wasn’t Ruin’s vision for the world. It was Mare’s.

_Did I… die?_

If so, death hurt a great deal more than Marsh had expected. Perhaps that was because it was what he deserved.

He straightened, standing again. He left the flower where it was. It was easy to imagine Mare picking it, bringing it inside and tending to it for as long as she could, but he had nowhere to put it. It would only die and Marsh had caused enough death.

A figure appeared beside him.

Marsh turned sharply and found himself facing Sazed. Or no. _Not_ Sazed, because he stood there in Terris robes of full, bright, _true_ colour. Only one thing had had true colour. Only Ruin, when it had bothered to appear.

‘I am not Ruin, my friend,’ said Sazed.

Marsh said nothing. He should have removed the linchpin spike while he’d still had the opportunity. He should have known better. Carefully, Marsh repeated his earlier experiment, opening his hand and closing it into a fist. He could still move. If he was very quick…

‘I won’t stop you,’ Sazed said. ‘But only because I believe that would be worse. Please, listen to me, my friend; Ruin no longer a threat to you. Vin used the power of Preservation to stop him and I now possess both powers. I found that… I am the Hero of Ages.’

The Hero of Ages. Marsh remembered little of the prophecy, beyond what basic Steel Ministry doctrine had said.

Vin had come across more information and Marsh had briefly skimmed the logbook, but that was it. At any other time in his life he’d have found it fascinating. Then? He’d had many other concerns; some legitimate, but most fuelled by Ruin.

‘You possess both powers,’ Marsh said flatly. Both powers. What in the damned world was _Preservation_?

It didn’t matter. This being in front of him, Sazed or not, claimed to have the power of Ruin. Marsh _should_ remove the spike. Yet… if it was Sazed, Marsh owed him more than he could ever repay. Sazed was, after all, among the long list of people Marsh had tried to kill. He was also a Terrisman and remained the only person who’d made an effort to befriend him after Marsh’s transformation. For all the good it had done both of them.

Sazed shook his head. ‘This will take some explaining, I think. But I believe you are owed this in full, if you will allow me the time?’

If he allowed him the time. Marsh _wanted_ to know what had happened. He wanted know if anyone else had lived. And he wanted to know if the plants really were green.

However, Marsh wasn’t convinced that was _his_ decision. He examined his memories. The exploding ashmounts killing thousands of innocent people; the destruction of Luthadel, his home despite its many faults. And the people he’d killed. The innocent Terrismen he’d pinned down and murdered; the blood that he’d revelled in. Nausea rose again, sharp and unpleasant. Marsh hated the ash and the blood and himself.

_Good_.

Marsh clenched his hands into fists, but he didn’t reach for the linchpin spike.

‘The world is saved,’ Sazed said. ‘Ruin has lost and I have taken care of the Koloss. You don’t have to worry; we have time.’

Warily, Marsh gave him a nod. There was no one in immediate danger from him, should this take a turn for the worst. Anyway, Ruin had no need to explain anything to Marsh. It never had.

Sazed launched into an explanation that was every bit as lengthy as he’d promised. Marsh had been out of the loop for a long time now. He stared over the fields of flowers and listened to impossible descriptions of power and ability and a world where there was no longer any ash. Preservation and Ruin and an entire planet moved. Marsh wasn’t certain he followed it all, let alone believed it.

His head buzzed with it. Vin was dead. He’d expected that, after watching her disappear, but apparently she’d lived long enough to watch him kill Elend. Apparently removing her earring – removing Ruin’s influence – had allowed her to Ascend. It had helped more than he’d thought.

Marsh felt a flash of deep satisfaction. He had _not_ allowed himself to go mad. He’d fought and he’d got through. What he’d done really had helped and it had brought the world Mare had always wanted.

But Vin had still died.

And the world really had burned and most it’s population with it.

Marsh had no reason to doubt that any more than he had reason to doubt the powers of Ruin and Preservation. Allomancy was of Preservation? Well, Marsh had always felt welcome in the mists that scared others. And he knew that Kelsier had felt the same.

‘You’re telling me the world is fixed,’ he said to Sazed.

‘As fixed as a world can be, I believe,’ Sazed said. ‘I’ll do my best to guide it.’

A world guided by the power of Ruin was doomed. However, one guided by Sazed… assuming Marsh chose to believe this was Sazed. Although he could do nothing if it wasn’t.

Marsh rubbed a hand over his face, feeling very, very tired. It was difficult even to remember how to move as himself.

‘I came to you to offer my help,’ Sazed said. ‘I can heal you where you’re missing the eye-spike, I think, although I cannot remove them entirely. I’m afraid Hemalurgy is too destructive. But I can stop you from feeling quite so much pain.’

Marsh’s head throbbed. A reprieve from that would be very welcome.

The healing however… Marsh found himself oddly repulsed by the idea. It was unclear whether Sazed was offering to restore his eye or just fix the wound. Marsh didn’t like either. Half-vision either way and he was an Inquisitor now. There was no going back from that and certainly no way back from the things he’d done. Allowing Sazed to heal him was a pretence Marsh couldn’t stand.

The lopsided vision was annoying, however.

‘Can you not return the spike?’

‘If that’s what you want,’ Sazed said, without any hint of surprise.

That was the third time he’d done something like that. Marsh had a growing suspicion that Sazed could read his mind.

Ruin had not been able to. That very fact had allowed Marsh to resist. He eyed the apparition in front of him. _Ruin could not read my mind_. Despite other disturbing consequences, this did suggest that Sazed was not Ruin.

‘Yes,’ Marsh said. ‘Return the spike and remove the pain.’

Sazed owed him nothing, but it would be just like the Terrisman to offer Marsh help regardless. Or it would have been. Before Marsh had tried to kill him.

Sazed didn’t even move, but Marsh’s headache vanished, his Inquisitor vision returning to what passed for normal.

Marsh pressed a hand to his face and touched the second spike. He hated it. He hated _them_ , all of them and everything that had created them. _So many people…_

‘The other survivors are not far,’ Sazed said gently. ‘If you walk over that hill, you will find them. Breeze is there. Hammond too. And Spook.’

The remnants of Kelsier’s crew.

The survivors of Ruin’s destruction would certainly need help and Marsh knew he was capable of helping. If he aided them in rebuilding, it would go a small way to repay what he owed them. They might execute him for his crimes, of course. That was a distinct possibility and only fair.

Yes, he could go to them and handle the consequences.

An Inquisitor, part of the world of ash, part of the Final Empire, could walk over the hill to where people were embracing the new world of clean air and grass and flowers. Mare’s dream come to life, with all its beauty that he could no longer see.

Marsh turned his back on the hill and stared out across the new landscape.

Was it Sazed he spoke to? It seemed likely but Marsh was far past believing his own impressions. He’d need time to think and examine and doubt. Everything he should have done as Ruin had first started to influence his thoughts.

Even with his back turned, Marsh felt Sazed leave. Much like he had with Ruin.

Marsh shook his head and turned his spike-eyed gaze up to the sky. The blue sky, if Sazed was to be believed. He glanced down at his blood stained, tattered, Inquisitor robe and at the obsidian axe he held. He sheathed the axe. It didn’t belong here among the flowers any more than he did.

He took a step forward and then another.

There would be some good he could do, out there. Something to begin to make up for the crimes he’d committed, something subtle, unseen.

Marsh strode away from the other survivors and into the new world.

 


End file.
